Intro

The Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN) is an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers; the network was founded in 2008 to centralise existing research on the topic of nonreligion and secularity and to facilitate discussion in this area.

This website - launched in December 2011 - is our new home on the internet. To find out more about the changes to the site, please have a look around, or see the 'About Us' section for more information. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy the site and welcome your feedback and suggestions for additions and improvements.

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Funding

This page offers brief descriptions of and links to various funding opportunities for researchers. This includes job announcements, grants and other prospects. New funding and errors should be reported to the resource editor Jesper Aagaard Petersen.

Blackham Fellowships
Administered by the British Humanist Association, New Humanist and the South Place Ethical Society, the Blackham Fellowships consist of a grant of £10,000 for the purpose of transforming doctoral research in a field covered by the Blackham Fellowships into publishable form as a book. The candidate is also expected to participate with a public lecture, a brief article and an internship. The fellowship is relevant for students in Philosophy, Literature or History on a subject related to the study of non-religious ethics, Humanism or rationalism in Britain, examined in the last three years. Application guidelines and form can be found here. The deadline for the current application round is March 31, 2012.

IWM Fellowships
The Austrian Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences. It is contructed as an open community of scholars that consists of Permanent Fellows, Visiting Fellows and Junior Visiting Fellows. It hosts about fifty fellows and guests every year, including academics as well as journalists and translators, most of whom come from Europe and North America. They work on projects of their own choice within the Institute’s research focuses. The second focus is “Religion and Secularism“, structured around five main topics: first, an examination of contemporary forms of belief and, second, of forms of disbelief; third, a study of different secular regimes; fourth, religion’s potential to mobilize people to violence, and, finally, the role of religion in creating social cohesion across gaps of income, ethnicity and nationality. There is no single application procedure or date for these fellowships; the various avenues for funding are outlined here.

The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University
During the academic years 2012/13 and 2013/14, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies will focus on belief and unbelief and how they have interacted in history. Their aim is to bring to five to six Fellows per semester to the Center pursuing their own scholarly projects and contributing to the intellectual community of the Center and the university. Fellowships at the Davis Center may run either for one semester (September-January or February-June) of for the full academic year, September-June. Though the Center is normally able to offer fellowship support for only a single semester, it welcomes the residence of year-long Fellows who combine Center support with funds from elsewhere. Selection criteria include the candidates’ research projects, the relationship of those projects to the Center’s theme, the candidates’ previous scholarly work, and the candidates’ ability to contribute to the intellectual life and intellectual exchange of the Center. Applicants must have their doctoral degrees in hand at the time of application. Center fellowships are residential. Application guidelines can be found here and here. Applications were due December 1, 2011, but will probably be reopened with a deadline in July.